The invention concerns a continuous method for producing incontinence articles in the form of pants for receiving body excrements, comprising a front belly section and a rear back section, which are connected to each other at side seam areas on both sides during production to form a belly and back band, which is continuous in the transverse or peripheral hip direction and has a hip opening that is closed in the peripheral hip direction, and a crotch section which has an absorbent body and extends in a longitudinal direction between the belly section and the back section, and is permanently attached to the belly section and to the back section, wherein the crotch section as well as the belly section and the back section define the leg openings of the incontinence article, wherein first elastification means are provided in the belly section and the back section, which extend in the transverse or peripheral hip direction at a separation from each other and parallel to each other to extensively elastify the belly area and the back area, wherein second elastification means are provided in an area of the belly section and the back section on the crotch side facing the leg openings (i.e. remote from the hip), which extend starting from the two side seam areas towards a longitudinal center axis of the incontinence article in a curved shape, thereby fanning out with increasing separation from each other.
A three-component incontinence article of this type is disclosed e.g. in the German patent application DE 10 2007 055524.7 of the Assignee, which has not been previously published.
In this specific product concept, an H-shaped basic structure of the incontinence article is realized by joining the crotch section, which extends in the longitudinal direction, to the belly section, which extends substantially in the transverse or peripheral hip direction, and to the correspondingly extending back section when these three components are flatly extended. The incontinence article is then modularly designed from the components crotch section, belly section and back section. These components are advantageously initially connected to each other via the crotch section, and preferably after that, the side seam areas of the belly section are connected to those of the back section on both sides. This connection is realized by the manufacturer to obtain the shape of pants. This connection is typically permanent. However, it may also be provided that the pants can be opened, in particular, along a breaking line which may extend, in particular, in the side seam area, e.g. for removing a used incontinence article from a person who is in need of care.
Incontinence articles in the form of pants differ, in principle, from incontinence articles of normal diaper shape that can be opened and closed in that the hip size is generally predetermined and the article can be adjusted to different body sizes by providing a number of different basic sizes that can be elastically stretched. Towards this end, elastification means, in particular, in the form of bands or threads, often called LYCRA® (elastane) threads, are generally connected in a prestrained state (stretch-bond method) to chassis materials of the incontinence article, i.e. they are fixed in the prestrained state to the chassis materials e.g. by means of glue. Due to their pretension, these elastification means gather the chassis materials to thereby form crimps. The incontinence article or the elasticised chassis materials of the incontinence article can be elastically stretched again when the incontinence article is applied, like pants, to the user. Several incontinence articles in the form of pants comprising elasticised chassis materials of this type have been disclosed and are also discussed e.g. in the above-mentioned document WO 2004/052260 A1.
It is difficult to produce an optimum contour of the leg openings, in particular, when working at high machine speed, in particular in a range of several 100 m/min, which is normal during production of modern incontinence articles, since both the crotch section and the belly and back section of the incontinence article define the leg openings.
It is the underlying purpose of the present invention to provide a continuous method for producing an incontinence article in the form of pants having the above-mentioned features, which takes into account, in particular, the above-mentioned aspects of providing the leg opening contour and which can be economically performed.